CIA let 9/11 prisoner design vacuum cleaner

ASSOCIATED PRESS

July 12, 2013 01:58 AM

FILE - This file photo downloaded from the Arabic language web site www.muslm.net, believed to have been taken in July 2009, shows a man identified by the site as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, in detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The picture was allegedly taken by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and released only to the detainee's family. Confined to the basement of a CIA secret prison in Romania about a decade ago, Mohammed asked his jailers whether he could embark on an unusual project: Would the spy agency allow Mohammed, who had earned his bachelor's in mechanical engineering, to design a vacuum cleaner? (AP Photo/www.muslm.net, File)AP

ASSOCIATED PRESS

July 12, 2013 01:58 AM

WASHINGTON -- Confined to the basement of a CIA secret prison in Romania about a decade ago, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, asked his jailers whether he could embark on an unusual project: Would the spy agency allow Mohammed, who had earned his bachelor's in mechanical engineering, to design a vacuum cleaner?

The agency officer in charge of the prison called CIA headquarters and a manager approved the request, a former senior CIA official told the Associated Press.

Mohammed had endured the most brutal of the CIA's harsh interrogation methods and had confessed to a career of atrocities. But the agency had no long-term plan for him. Someday, he might prove useful again.

And for that, he'd need to be sane.

"We didn't want them to go nuts," the former senior CIA official said, one of several who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the CIA prisons or Mohammed's interest in vacuums.

So, using schematics from the Internet as his guide, Mohammed began re-engineering one of the most mundane of household appliances.

Mohammed graduated from North Carolina A&T State University with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1986.

It remains a mystery how far Mohammed got with his designs or whether the plans still exist. The secret CIA prison in Romania was shuttered in early 2006 and Mohammed was transferred later that year to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base prison, where he remains. It's unlikely he was able to take his appliance plans to Cuba.